


The Problem With Sprites

by GemmaRose



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 16:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3388790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jade remembers one very large drawback to her godhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem With Sprites

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Friends Forever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/646257) by [catfishCaper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catfishCaper/pseuds/catfishCaper). 
  * Inspired by [Lining on the Bubbles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/527157) by [RyMagnatar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar). 



John hovered anxiously by the doorway. Well, he wasn't literally hovering, he was just standing next to the portal of white light, counting under his breath as each friend and teammate passed through into their new universe. Six trolls, four kid-guardians, and Dave and Rose made twelve. That just left him, the leader, and Jade, who was talking with the handful of sprites who had survived the fight.

"Jade!" he called out, sticking his foot in the door before it swung shut. Sure would suck to get trapped here with only his sister for human company. Three years had been plenty of that, and he didn't think he could stand a whole eternity.

"Coming!" she called back, perhaps a bit too loud but then again, _his_ ears were still ringing from that death honk, and he’d been a gust of wind at the time.

Jade practically danced everywhere she went, even into battle, even when she was under the Batterwitch’s control, even that time she broke her leg in the wheely-chair accident a year into their voyage on the battleship. She moved with an easy grace he’d never had, at all times, regardless of situation or injury, which made her slow plod towards him worrying instead of irritating. Jade never plodded, never ever. There were probably words for how she walked but John wasn’t much of a linguist and that was beside the point anyways. Something was deeply wrong.

Jade came to a stop in front of him, and John’s chest tightened at the look on her face. Whatever was wrong, it was _really_ bad.

“Jade?” he frowned, reaching out to wipe a smear of blood from her forehead. “What’s up?”

She sighed heavily, and it probably should’ve alarmed him much more than it did that a not-insignificant amount of blood oozed from between her ribs when her chest moved. “I can’t.”

He blinked a few times. “Can’t what, fly?”

“No.” she chuckled, and though it sounded like a bark he didn’t mention it. “I can still fly.”

“Don’t wanna leave Nana and the rest behind?” he guessed, glancing at the cluster of sprites. She’d told him what happened to Davesprite, and he sorta understood why it had happened, but it was still a little jarring to not have his feathery orange sprite-body in the crowd, and if Davesprite had been there, he wouldn’t have wanted to leave so fast either.

“I can’t.” Jade looked frustrated, and almost ready to cry. Not good.

“Well, I’ll stay until you’re ready then.” John smiled, hoping his gut was wrong and all Jade needed was a bit more time to say goodbye. Unfortunately, the tears welling in her eyes suggested otherwise.

“I can’t, John.” she ground out, practically shaking, and John nearly facepalmed. She’d fused with Becsprite somehow when she went God Tier, and sometimes she still had trouble with the sprite limitations. He had to ask questions.

“What can’t you do?” 

She seemed to slump, but at least she wasn’t shaking anymore. That was good. “I can’t leave.”

That was, less good. “What? Why?!” he blurted.

“I’m a sprite.” she answered simply. They’d learnt the best way for her to get around the obtuse nature of spritespeak was to use as few words as possible.

“So you’d have to leave your Becsprite abilities behind?” John frowned. “Sorry, Jade, but that doesn’t sound like it’d be worth staying for.”

“Well, yes and no.” Jade nearly winced as the words left her mouth, and this time John actually facepalmed.

“Sorry.” he grinned sheepishly, trying to come up with a question specific enough to break her out of sprite mode. “How is your fusion with Becsprite stopping you from coming with us?”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I didn’t fuse with Becsprite. Hours before I became God Tier, I prototyped my dreamself. In this body, I was a sprite before I became a God. I am a player, and the game recognizes that, that’s why Nana treated me the way she did.”

John opened his mouth to interject that his Nana would treat anybody like she treated them, but then he remembered Davesprite again. Nana had never offered Davesprite cake, or called him by embarrassing pet names. She’d never actually spoken to him directly at all, that John could remember.

“But I’m also a sprite, and sprites can’t go through the endgame portal. They die. _I_ would die.” she looked longingly over John’s shoulder, at the bright rectangle which should have been her salvation but instead would be her death.

“You can’t know that.” John blurted, grabbing Jade’s arms and shaking her. “It could just take away your sprite powers. You could be completely fine.”

“John, I’m a sprite. I _know_ these things.”

“And I know other things.” he frowned, moving his hands down to clasp both of her together. “I remember my bubble.” her sharp intake of breath is enough that he knows she understands him, and he shoves the memories of dissolving flesh and lidless eyes to the back of his mind. “I remember when yours came back to you. I remember Davesprite’s _face_ when he realised what we knew.” he lifts her hands and squeezes them, doing his best not to imagine them half charred half mummified. “I know what happens if you stay, and it’s not pretty.”

“It never is.” Jade whispers, teeth digging into her lower lip as she recalls her own doomed self. “But I can’t do it, John. I can’t go into that portal knowing it’ll kill me. It’s against a sprite’s coding to self destruct.”

“But- but-” John’s brain spun frantically. Jade hadn’t been able to tell him much when she remembered, and neither of them had wanted to talk about it the next day, but in a way not knowing exactly what he’d leave her to was worse. “But it’s not the portal for our game!” his eyes lit up, and he gestured at the structure which rose up behind him. Brilliant red where it should be lime green, and mirrored so the chimney was on the wrong side. “You can’t go through our endgame portal, but what about this one?” he slapped his hand against the glass-like surface of the giant logo, grinning triumphantly. “This can’t be precedented. Even as a sprite, there’s no way you can be sure this portal will kill you. You can come with!” he laughed, strained and ever so slightly hysterical. He couldn’t let them take her, not another version, not the sister he’d fought so hard to ensure lived this time.

“John, please-”

“You can come with.” John’s shoulders tensed, and he pressed his mouth into a thin line. “I’m not leaving until you agree to come with me.”

“And what if I can’t? What if the portal won’t let me through?”

“Then I decaptchalogue some paper and we send them a letter saying we won’t join them.” John crossed his arms, jaw adopting the stubborn set which brokered no argument. Jade sighed, a wordless admittance of defeat he’d rarely heard when they played games or sparred on the battleship, and John stepped aside so the door was held between his shoulders and the wall. “Ladies first.” he smiled slightly, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his glasses.

“I-” Jade looked down at her feet, both shoes gone and the lower half of her left stocking too. “I can’t.”

“I can stand here all day.” John tightened his grip on his elbows. “If you’re scared, you can jump. Or I could push you.”

“I don’t wanna die, okay?” Jade shivered, crossing her arms over her stomach and tugging at the ragged ends of her sleeves. John momentarily envied that the only damage her clothing had taken was past the elbows and knees. His shirt was little more than scraps, stuck on more by blood than anything else. “Dying hurts, a lot.”

“You think I don’t know that?” John nearly stepped forward, but the door shifted and he settled for simply standing up straighter. “I’ve lost track of the number of times you talked me into playing pigeon for you. You’ve killed me with every type of ammo you could alchemize. I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, and shot some more. I’ve bled out, burnt up, suffocated, exploded, and one time I think I died of alcohol poisoning.”

Jade opened her mouth to ask for elaboration, but John didn’t pause long enough to let her get a word in. “I’m familiar with just about every type of death, and I can tell you.” he paused a moment, the words catching in his throat for the space of a heartbeat before he could spit them out. “None of it hurts as much as the end of that doomed bubble.”

Jade fully flinched at her own memory, bones twisted in ways nature never intended and so much blood she would never stop seeing the stains on that one dress. John’s shoulders drooped, and he pulled Jade into a hug. “If you die. Like, if you’re dead for good on the other side, I’ll make sure you’re buried at sea.”

Jade tensed at that, momentarily wondering when she’d mentioned her planned will before remembering this John had spent three years with her on the ship, not died on the first day. “Thanks.” she murmured into his shoulder, and he didn’t try to hold her as she stepped back. “See you on the other side, John.”

There was a flash of light as she stepped back into the doorway, and John didn’t wait even a full heartbeat before following her. He emerged into an unfamiliar room, spacious and warm and a little bit crowded by all his friends clustered around the door. Karkat was cursing up a storm, ranting about sprites and foresight, but all John really noticed was Jade’s body slumped against Dave. Somebody sat him down in an armchair and laid Jade out on the couch next to it, tucking her arms against her sides rather than crossing them over her chest like a corpse. something warm was pressed into his hands, and he took a sip without tasting it.

He would have to explain what had happened, why Jade was out cold when the rest of them were fully awake, how she’d lost her ears, what had kept them from following right through. He would have to do all that later, but resurrection took about fifteen minutes for most bloodless deaths, and he could definitely make this drink last fifteen minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I know this says it’s inspired by Friends Forever, and it is, just in the most oblique way possible. I was thinking about the fanon that sprites don’t follow their players into the new universe and what that might mean for poor Jack ( _thanks_ Rapunzel) if they survive their Scratch. So of course, since I don’t know how Lydia is planning to pull off “Friends Forever 2: Electric Boogaloo” I decided to test one of my more stubborn ideas on Jade. I could not, however, decide if I wanted her to ultimately survive or stay perma-dead, hence the open ending. For those of you wondering about the Troll count, it's Karkat, Aradia, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Gamzee. And as for the doomed timeline bubbles that John and Jade mention, well... [most sessions fail](seer0ftime.tumblr.com/post/46192108753). (AO3 keeps fucking up the link, sorry, just delete everything before seer0time)
> 
>  
> 
> if that link doesn't work, try [this one](http://binart.tumblr.com/post/32579933095).


End file.
